Immersive, engaging and with the kind of gameplay depth that so many shooters lack, Metroid Prime 3 might not represent a huge progression as far as the series goes, but that doesn't stop it from being one of the best games I've played all year - and certainly one of best yet on the Wii.

All of which makes Dota 2 an absurd video game to try to recommend. Being the largest and most immediately open MOBA, with Valve showcasing its talent for rewarding and fostering a community, it demands and offers more than literally any game I can think of. It's almost more comparable to basketball than most commercial games. Something utterly opaque bearing no endgame, but that could happily fill every waking second of your life.

It's not the levelling, it's the taking part that counts. That's what makes Guild Wars 2 great. Almost every aspect of its design serves the individual player and whole community equally, and there's a breezy willingness to put the content ahead of the grind throughout. It's a little lightweight, perhaps; its fantasy world is more picturesque than truly enveloping, and its social and gameplay hooks offer instant gratification over ties that bind. But it's still the most coherent, seamless, social and fun MMO in a long time - and the only one that can call itself truly modern.

Expertly put together and able to cater for both those that want a quick and simple race and those that want a true to life racing experience, Forza 2 is unquestionably one hell of an achievement. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got things to calibrate. So, so many things...

With 90 brow-furrowing levels to pile through - and a built-in level editor for creative sorts - iBlast Moki 2 offers the kind of value that will have Satoru Iwata crying into his sales figures. The iPhone's not exactly short of great physics puzzle games, but it'd be remiss of anyone not to pick this one up.

FIFA 13 is also the most broadly appealing game EA Canada has ever produced in other ways. It's absolutely rammed with different ways into it, and it takes unprecedented advantage of its intimacy with the people who run the big leagues and own all the broadcast rights.

A genuinely ground-breaking blockbuster in videogame history. There were moments playing GTA IV that I thought back to my initial experiences with games, and realised exactly how far we've come. There's never been anything quite like GTA IV in the world. That there makes me genuinely happy to be a gamer.

Those expecting revelatory improvements in areas like AI may be mildly disappointed by Shogun 2. Those after a sumptious, weekend-whittling strategy epic heaving with flavour and challenge can reach for their uchi-bukuro with confidence. This is a corker.

In some ways, it's the closest we've come to the enormous social novel from the period after that which Empire chronicles: it's a Tolstoy-esque War and Peace of a game. Its problems may be the inevitable problems of trying something with such sheer scope. As such, if you want the breathtaking vision of the game, you have to accept the flaws in the details - for now, at least.

The platform game has been around for so long that it's easy to assume that the genre has run out of surprises. A showcase for the game designer's art and one of the greatest platform games of this - or any - year, Rayman Legends disproves that in glorious style.

With a whole new 80-event campaign designed to showcase these new modes, along with a smattering of traditional races and fastest-lap challenges, Fury almost doubles the size of an already generous game and therefore thoroughly warrants its asking price. One of the best downloadable games available now has one of the best expansion packs.

Of the shooters available on the 360 at launch, Call of Duty 2 is easily the most accessible and consistently entertaining single player offering, but if online is your thing you're better off considering what Rare has to offer ["Perfect Dark Zero"].

The real let down is the racing, in that it's simply not as much fun as it used to be, and as such Revenge can no longer be considered the best Burnout game. That's not to say it's "not fun", because we had a blast, but tasked with weighing it up against its predecessors, it's a slight backward step.

So, the most beautiful world in a game? Perhaps. To look at it’s cohesive, well-formed, has some of the best, most inventive enemy designs ever conceived, and the shimmering draw distance constantly beckons you into it’s hazy good-looking promise.

Every minute of that five hours was excellent, and Zero Mission takes its place as one of the finest titles in the GBA's already impressive pantheon of platformers. However, we can't help but wish that it had been longer.

The camera view is frustrating, the controls are frustrating, the AI is frustrating, the resource system is frustrating, the missions are frustrating, and above all the fact that this game isn't half as good as we were all hoping it would be is very, very frustrating.

Technically it's better than either of the previous two, which means it's better than any other golf game we've played...For those of us with Tiger pedigree though, the lack of online play and niggling flaws overshadow an otherwise generous update.

It's stoic, uncompromising, difficult to get to know, but also deep, intriguingly disturbed and perversely rewarding. You can learn to love Demon's Souls like few other games in the world. But only if you're prepared to give yourself over to it. [JPN Import]

Inclusive and often thought-provoking, this is a daring portrait of a game-world with all the failure cut out, and it's hard not to love a game that loves you so much in return. Fable II will charm you, thrill you, and leave you very, very happy.

In offering a slick touch-based reinvention of what platformers can offer, Mirror's Edge succeeds brilliantly. While by no means perfect, and a little undernourished in places, it's a game that points to a bright future for the device.